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Shockwave HISS does come with a Constructicon-styled BAT, Destro, and, most importantly, 3.75" scale Soundwave as a tape deck.

The Starscream Skystriker from last year had Cobra Commander and a miniature Megatron pistol, it was $50, and the vehicle base price was $30. This HISS is a $20 base price vehicle and 2 figures from GI Joe doesn't really impress, so it's only the Soundwave tape deck and Energon dolly which attempts to compensate for the disproportionate pricing.

Darth Vader is becoming the Mickey Mouse of Star Wars.

"In Brooklyn, a castle, is where dwell I"

The use of a lightsaber does not make one a Jedi, it is the ability to not use it.

I'm honestly not trying to justify the mark-up, but the Shockwave HISS does require some new tooling for the cannons.

Starscream Skystriker should've been $30 (based solely on the vehicle price). At that time, Joe figures were going for $7, and we'll count Megatron as an accessory. Cobra Commander used almost exactly the same number of re-used parts as Ace from the Skystriker, so there's no point including him. So a markup of $20, or about 66.7%.

The HISS is a $20 vehicle, and Joes now run $10. He has two figures, both repaints, whereas the first (black/brown) and third (Retaliation) HISS Tanks had a mostly new figure. So, to be fair, we'll say the one extra figure is adding maybe $6 to the cost. Soundwave, again, we'll say is an accessory. Being generous, the central cannon might run an extra $4, and I'm pretty sure the side cannons are both based on one of the existing HISS side cannons (it has two different ones). So a total cost of $30 and a markup of $30, or 100%.

100% sounds bad, but a $10 increase in the inflated exclusive price for something that's once a year isn't awful.

The HISS requires only the barrel of the turret to be swapped out, and that is already a separate piece on the tooling, you can tell because the turret housing is screwed in half while the barrel is not. So it's a cheap change.

I dunno, I guess you could nitpick my point if you tried hard enough, but ultimately I feel like it's a pattern where every single entry is overpriced - what about Derpy the MLP figure, is there justification for that pricetag?

Darth Vader is becoming the Mickey Mouse of Star Wars.

"In Brooklyn, a castle, is where dwell I"

The use of a lightsaber does not make one a Jedi, it is the ability to not use it.

I'm not intending to nitpick. There's no doubt these figures are all a bit more overpriced than in the past, but it's not horrible. Any more, though, and it would be horrible.

It feels like a nitpick, like any tiny thing is justification for Hasbro's significant pattern of gouging. A 55% increase on Bruticus is really bad.

IIRC, weren't previous Joe exclusives $12 for "regular" and $14 for "exclusive"? Both versions of Jinx are $14.99.

I believe they were $12 and $12, actually, but I didn't buy last year's so I'm not sure if they had a bump then. I ended up having to sell both my Slaughters though to buy my mom a birthday present (I had just moved in here and was depleted on funds), those were definitely both $12.

Darth Vader is becoming the Mickey Mouse of Star Wars.

"In Brooklyn, a castle, is where dwell I"

The use of a lightsaber does not make one a Jedi, it is the ability to not use it.

I know it's only five bucks, but, where I was thinking, "I'll see if I can get one and, if I can't, I'll be cool with that," now it's more like, "Scre thisl I can paint my own BAT if I want one, and that Shockwave barrel probably comes from an existing Transformer--I could buy that and a HISS and make my own for half this amount."

The barrel appears to be new, but it's really not terribly expensive to throw that together. The Soundwave tape deck with 3 tapes is kind of cute, but not $65 cute. The Energon on trolley is ok but same thing. It's the new HISS, if it had been last year's version instead I probably would have been more tempted.